‘This is a deeply flawed and dangerous Bill’ – Care Not Killing’s response to assisted suicide vote

Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, responds to the Third Reading vote within the House of Common during which laws legalising assisted suicide passed by a narrow majority of 314 votes to 291: 

This is a deeply flawed and dangerous Bill that since November has been made considerably worse with vital safeguards watered down or scrapped. Take the proposal for the High Court to oversee each application as a part of a proper judicial process – something sold to the general public as making the Bill the ‘safest on the earth’. 

Now an opaque informal panel, will review applications, chosen from those with a predisposition in favour of assisted suicide as most medics and psychiatrists will refuse to participate. Importantly the panel won’t have the facility to compel witnesses like a court, do not need to talk to the applicant, the applicant’s family members and even the family doctor.

But that is the issue when laws is rushed for ideological reasons. Indeed, through the Report Stage, MPs had under 10 hours to contemplate over 130 amendments to the Bill, or lower than 5 minutes per change. Does anyone think that is enough time to contemplate changes to a draft law that quite literally is a matter of life and death?

The current Bill fails to guard vulnerable and disabled people from coercion. This isn’t hyperbole but based on what happens within the US state of Oregon, the model for this law. There, a majority of those that have ended their lives lately cite fear of being a burden on their families, carers or funds as a reason. While that law has been expanded and prolonged several times. Worryingly ‘terminal’ now includes eating disorders equivalent to anorexia and even insulin dependent diabetes. 

And while MPs are focused on debating assisted suicide, they will not be specializing in palliative and end of life care which is crisis in our country. One in 4 individuals who would profit from palliative care can’t access it and our amazing hospices, are so wanting money that 20 per cent of them have cut services or staff. This is what we should always be talking about. We need way more care, not killing.